CONTRIBUTIONS OF POLITICAL PARTIES ON AFRICA
What is Mass Nationalism?
Mass Nationalism, is the mass feeling and attitude of demanding independence by using a nationalist struggle in form of unified parties beyond the class, tribe or ethnic background.
Mass nationalism was featured by formation of political parties whose ambition was to achieve independence of not only a given class of people but by the entire nation. Example of those political parties were as follows:
The TANU “Tanganyika African National Union” formed in 1954 under Julius K. Nyerere.
The ASP “Afro Shiraz Party” in Zanzibar under Abeid Aman Karume.
The UTP “United Tanganyika Party” under Martin Kayamba.
The KANU “Kenya African National Union” under Jomo Kenyatta.
The NPCP “Nairobi People’s Convention Party” under Thom Mboya.
The UPC “Uganda People’s Congress” under Milton Obote parties in East Africa etc.
The UGCC “United Gold Coast Convention” under J.B. Danquar.
NCNC “National council of Nigeria and the Cameroons” founded in 1944.
The CPP “Convention People’s Party” under Kwame Nkrumah.
The DPNC “Democratic Party of Nigeria and Cameroon”
The SCP “Senegalese Communist Party” under Leopold Senghor.
The PAIGC “Party for African Independence in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde”.
and many others parties in West Africa.
The ANC “African National Congress” since 1925 in South Africa.
The PAC “Pan African Congress” since 1955 in South Africa.
The SWANU “South West African National Union” in Namibia.
The SWAPO “South West African People’s Organization” in Namibia.
The ZAPU “Zimbabwe African People’s Union”.
The ZANU “Zimbabwe African National Union”.
The MCP “Malawi Congress Party”
The UNIP “Union for National Independence Party” in Zambia.
STRENGTH OF POLITICAL PARTIES
(ROLES, FUNCTION AND CONTRIBUTIONS OF POLITICAL PARTIES ON AFRICA)
1. The political parties arose awareness among different groups of Africans.
It was done through political rallies
It was done also through propagandas, newspapers E.g Sauti ya TANU in Tanganyika and The Pilot in Nigeria, they also organized boycotts, demonstrations and the like. For example, the CPP of Ghana convinced people to boycott against the colonialist.
2. Played a great unifying role.
The political parties unified Africans to fight against the common foes, colonialism E.g CPP and TANU mobilized the youth and women to support them in fulfilling their goals of fighting for their independence.
3. They organized peaceful demonstrations against colonial policies like taxation, cash crop growing, Forced labor etc.
4. Parties sent representatives in the pre- independence negotiations and last-minute constitutional Preparations.
5. They mobilized funds to finance political activities including campaigns for the pre- independence Elections.
6. Establishment of mass media.
Political parties had a great contribution in the fight for independence since they established mass media which were used to air out African grievances in the struggle for independence, the mass media were also used to mobilize majority support in the fight for independence. For Example, in Tanganyika, TANU established a Newspaper called Sauti ya TANU similarly Nkrumah’s CPP established the Accra Evening News in Nigeria the NCNC had the newspaper called The Pilot.
7. Political Parties discourage Tribalism and Regionalism. Political parties played a very important role in killing the sense of tribalism and regionalism among Africans. For example, TANU preached about nationalism beyond tribal or regional level and urged all Tanganyikans to unite and fight for independence of the whole nation and not of the specific ethnic group or certain region.
WEAKNESSES OF POLITICAL PARTIES
1. Opposition among political parties within African countries. Some political parties were puppet parties whose intention was to stop and discourage the anti-colonial movements of other serious political parties in Africa, For example, in Tanganyika United Tanganyika Party (U.T.P) of Martin Kayamba, and African National Congress (ANC) of Zuberi Mtemvu opposed the anti-colonial movement of TANU and hence weakened TANU towards achievement of its goals of getting the people of Tanganyika as early as possible.
2. Members illiteracy. The high levels of illiteracy in Africa affected the struggle. The few educated People Africa had by 1945- 50 were mainly centered on Urban areas only leaving the rest of countries in a deep pit of illiteracy. This left the rest of the regions off the struggle for so many years.
3. Lack of a common language. This also disturbed the struggle for independence. In many colonies Africans used their vernacular languages which were not common in the entire particular nations. This promoted the divide and rule policy of the colonialists.
4. The colonial government. The colonial government was another challenge that faced political parties in their activities in Africa, E.g British colonial government restricted government workers to join any political parties, For Example in Tanganyika, Nyerere was forced to leave his teaching profession in favour of his political career.
The colonial government was also in habit of oppressing and harassing African activists, for example, the Ghanaian colonial government imprisoned Kwameh Nkrumah whereas the Boer dominated government of South Africa imprisoned Nelson Mandela for 27 years hence this was a challenge of political parties in Africa.
5. Ideological differences. There were also ideological differences even within the different political parties. Example in Uganda; where the DP leaders had capitalist sentiments, UNC and UPC were pro- socialist in Angola MPLA of Augustino Neto and UNITA of Jonas Savimbi differed in ideologies leading to conflicts between the two political parties the conflict that lasted from 1970s to 2002 when Jonas Savimbi died. They thus never combined efforts against the British because of such differences.
6. Financial problems. Political parties faced financial constraints/ problems this was due to the fact that their members were poor and many were affected by the intensive exploitation of the colonial system and hence they were unable to contribute enough fund enough to run daily activities of these political parties.
7. Tribal and religious differences. In some colonies the parties were based on tribes and religions. For example, In Zimbabwe, while most of the Shona were ZANU members, most of the Ndebele were ZAPU members. Religious divisions between Protestants and Catholics also affected the struggle. Example in Uganda, Parties never combined efforts because of the differences in religion.
8. Assassination and arbitrary arrest of party leaders. This also affected the functioning of the African parties. For example, the life imprisonment of Nelson Mandela of ANC, assassination of Steve Biko of ANC, Amilcar Cabral of PAIGC and others.
